One of the most significant and least recognized features of the early 1940's was that it gave rise to a profound reconceptualization of the terms of racialized citizenship within the United States. World War II was a moment when an American universalism flourished, when it was actually good to be an American nationalist, when pluralism was not so divisive, and when difference did not mean apartness, let alone separatism. As a result of the post World War II era there has been a great leap in the degree to which American thinking about world-order and world-power has consistently foregrounded what some may call a cultural-racial situation at home.